Best Kept Secret: A Novel

Charlie! You need to turn off the television and come talk with me.” It was nine o’clock on a cool June morning, and I stood in his bedroom with my hands on my hips, staring at a scribbled mess on the wall. Only a month shy of his fourth birthday and my son considered himself a Van Gogh, regardless of the medium upon which he chose to display his work.

His face popped around the doorway, his eyes darting from me to the wall. “What, Mama?”

I pointed at the wall. “Did you do this?”

“No.” He dropped his gaze to the floor.

“Don’t lie to me, Charles Sutter.” I swore I wouldn’t be one of those mothers who used her child’s full name as a threat, but there I was.

“I’m not.” He stomped his little foot.

I went over to him and crouched down, taking one of his hands in mine. “Sweetie. No one else lives here but us, and Mommy knows she didn’t color on the wall. So I’ll ask you one more time. Did you do this?”

His dark head bobbed once, but he still didn’t meet my gaze. “Sorry.”

“I forgive you, Charlie bear, but please don’t do it again.” I sighed. “Now, let’s get you dressed so we can get to play group.” The Mommy and Me group I’d been attending since Charlie was five months old was welcoming a new member, Hannah, a former stockbroker who had just adopted an adorable, chubby two-year-old girl from China. She had invited a few mothers over to her high-ceilinged, open-concept rambler for an introductory lunch and play time for the kids.

“I’ll do it myself!” he proclaimed. He dashed to his dresser and began yanking out handfuls of clothes I had just folded and put away the night before. He tossed the first batch to the floor, reaching in the drawer for another handful.

“Charlie, don’t!” I said, running over to stop him. He pulled on the T-shirt I attempted to take away from him.

“No!” he said. “It’s my shirt, Mama!”

Oh, dear Lord. I took a deep breath and stepped back. “Charlie, I am going into the kitchen. I will see you there in two minutes, and whatever you have on, even if you’re still in your undies, we are going to play group.”

He giggled. “Even if I’m naked?”

“Yes.” Trying not to smile and thus completely undermine my threat, I gave him a stern look and walked out of the room.

An hour later, we arrived at Hannah’s place with me in jeans and a ratty blue sweatshirt and Charlie in too-tight purple swim trunks and a bright yellow sweater. Four women including myself showed up, and now stood around the marble-topped island in Hannah’s kitchen. Since it was unseasonably chilly, instead of being outside, our children were playing directly off the kitchen in the toy-laden, toddler-proofed “great room,” a space that when I was growing up would have been called the den.

“Cadence, you should come to my party on Friday,” said Brittany, whose daughter, Sierra, was born a few months before Charlie and seemed to hit every developmental milestone—rolling over, crawling, eating solid foods—well before my son. Brittany, like me, worked from home, which I originally thought would be a commonality that bonded us. I soon discovered that while I planned to make my freelance work a career, Brittany saw hers as a scrapbook supply specialist as an excuse to kick her husband out of the house and throw a party. I genuinely liked the other women in the play group, but outside of our children being about the same age, we didn’t really have that much in common. Our relationships remained pretty much on the surface; our conversations centered around the kids. Most of the time, this was enough.

“Oh!” Renee squealed. “You totally should come, Cadence. The new flower hole punchers she has are super cute.” Renee was a former elementary schoolteacher, mother to three-year-old Juan, and prone to using the phrase “super cute” in just about every conversation she had.

“I would,” I said, trying not to visibly flinch, “but I’m on deadline. I don’t think I’ll have time.” When I first met Brittany, I had tried to forge a friendship with her, valiantly attending several of her parties over the past three years. I even purchased some of her company’s products to put together Charlie’s baby book, but only managed to complete the first four pages. And using the word “complete” might have been pushing it.

“What about Sunday’s knitting night?” Renee asked, as she dipped a strawberry into the cream cheese and Marshmallow Fluff dip Hannah had set out with a platter of fruit. “We’re working on a blanket for Hannah’s new edition.”

I gave a faltering smile to Hannah, who kept her eye on the children as they played. “I wish I could,” I said, “but Martin brings Charlie home on Sunday nights. I need to be there.” After watching so many of the other women find satisfaction—joy, even—in activities like these, I sometimes wondered what was wrong with me that I only found more excuses not to join them. I felt like I did back in high school, not wanting to be a cheerleader or head up the homecoming committee—I didn’t have a bubbly personality and didn’t care about the theme of a prom. And yet, I ached to fit in with the girls who did, like a hippo trying to fit in with a herd of gazelles.

“That’s too bad,” Brittany clucked. She smoothed her sleek blond pageboy. “It must be so difficult to work without Martin there to help out.”

“I manage.” I shrugged and looked down to the floor. These women knew that Martin and I had divorced, but I kept the details to myself. “I need to use the ladies’ room,” I said, rearranging my face into a cheery expression. “Will you excuse me?”

“Down the hall and on your left,” Hannah directed.

I stepped through the entryway and down the short hallway. In contrast to her modern kitchen, Hannah’s guest bathroom was a flashback to the mideighties, painted a pale shade of peach accented with a seashell wallpaper border and bright turquoise hand towels. As I put my hand on the doorknob to rejoin the group, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The space beneath my eyes was bruised from lack of sleep—my best hours for writing came after Charlie was in bed, and these days that time seemed to be getting later and later. My wild curls were pulled back in a clip, but I’d missed several strands and they spun out from the sides of my head like corkscrews. I let go of the doorknob and tried to smooth them, remembering a time when I checked myself in the mirror before I went out, not after I’d arrived at my destination.

I sighed. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to be here. I should have stayed home and worked on the article about food allergies I needed to turn in to Alpha Mom magazine the following week. Play group was more for Charlie’s sake than for mine anyway. Still, I showed up, just like I had for Sign with Your Baby classes and Toddler Yoga. I remained ever-determined to do with my child the kinds of things my mother had never done with me. In September, he would start going to preschool five mornings a week instead of just three, so it was easy to reason we could stop coming to play group then. School would provide him all the play time with other kids he’d need.

Back in the kitchen, I walked past the women toward the great room. “I’m going to check on Charlie,” I said, and the women smiled and nodded, continuing their conversation about the newest Pampered Chef knife set.

My son sat alone at the toddler table, scribbling away on a piece of paper with a thick, blue crayon. I dropped into the other tiny chair, a little horrified by how much of my hips hung over the seat.

“What are you drawing?” I asked, tilting my head so I could see the image on the page.

“ ’Pider-Man,” Charlie said. He was intent on his work and didn’t bother to look up.

“Of course you are.” I wasn’t sure where his obsession with the superhero came from; he’d never seen the movies or watched the cartoon. I blamed excessive product placement—did a three-year-old really need a toy cell phone emblazoned with Spider-Man’s face? Probably not, but I’d bought him one, nonetheless.

“Can I help you color?” I asked my son.

“No, I got it.”

“Okay,” I said. “You’re doing a good job coloring on the paper.” He gave me a mischievous grin, then went back to his picture—an abstract mess of red, blue, and black. Our refrigerator was covered in a multitude of similar depictions. I watched him for a minute, until he set his crayon down and held up the paper in a triumphant gesture.

“All done!” he announced. “It’s for you.”

“It is?” I took the paper and gave him a huge smile. “I love it. Thank you.”

“Welcome, Mama.” He jumped up and walked over to the corner where Leah, Hannah’s newly adopted little girl, was playing with a pile of blocks. He happily plopped to the floor and she pushed a few toward him. Again, I watched him, proud to see my child sharing the way I’d taught him.

There was a knock at the front door. Just as Hannah took a step to go answer it, the door swung open and in walked Susanne, one of the few women in our particular Mommy and Me group who still worked full-time. Susanne’s husband, Brad, stayed home with their daughter so Susanne could run her highly successful insurance brokerage, but when her schedule allowed, she brought Anya to our meetings herself. Susanne was curvy, like me, with straight black hair, a ghostly white, creamy complexion, and was never seen in public without a slash of bloodred lipstick. Outside of my sister, she was also the person with whom I spent the most time. When Susanne wasn’t busy working and Charlie was with Martin, we occasionally got together for conversation and a bottle of wine. I admired her blunt nature and quick wit, not to mention her professional success. She was one of those women who seemed to balance it all, and part of me hoped by spending time with her, that particular skill might rub off on me.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said as she joined the women in the kitchen. She wore dark, pin-striped slacks and a royal purple button-down blouse. “I had a hard time getting out of the office.”

I stood up and went back to stand with the other women around the island, passing Anya as she shot past me to join the other children at play. I tucked the picture Charlie had drawn for me in my purse. “Hey, Susanne,” I said.

Her face brightened when she turned and saw me. “Hey!” She leaned over and gave me a quick, one-armed hug.

“Do you guys want a glass of wine?” Brittany asked.

I looked over and saw that she was already pouring chardonnay into thin-stemmed, silver-rimmed goblets. My mouth watered a bit seeing the cool liquid stream out of the bottle’s neck. I’d made myself a promise a month ago—no wine until after Charlie went to bed—and I’d managed to stick to it.

For the most part.

One afternoon the previous week, Charlie had woken from his nap and snuck down the hall. When he entered the kitchen, I spun around in my chair, caught with a glass of syrah in my hand. I had told myself napping counted as his being in bed. Just a few minutes to take for myself. I don’t get pedicures or massages; I deserve some kind of escape.

“Can I have some of your wine, Mama?” he’d asked.

“No, monkey. Wine is for grown-ups,” I’d said. “I’ll make you some chocolate milk, though, okay?”

“Okay,” he’d said.

A few minutes later, we sat at the table together, each of us sipping our separate drinks. His gaze moved back and forth from my wineglass to my face a few times, his tiny eyebrows furrowed above the bridge of his nose. Unable to stand this scrutiny, I stood up and splashed the contents of my glass down the sink.

Now at Hannah’s, I glanced at the clock on the microwave—it was only 2:00 p.m. “It’s a little early for me, thanks,” I said, swallowing back an aching urge to join them.

“Oh, come on,” Renee said, raising her glass in a mock toast. “It’s five o’clock somewhere!”

“That’s true,” I said. With a hesitant smile, my resolve instantly vanished. It’s only one glass. And it’s not like I’m sitting at home, drinking alone. I’m being social. It would be rude not to join them.

“Well, then, that settles it,” Brittany said. She poured a full goblet and held it out to me. “I don’t know about you, but I’m a much happier mommy after a cocktail. Or three.” She giggled.

“Me, too,” Renee agreed. “They don’t call it the ‘wine with dinner hour’ for nothing. Juan whines while I make dinner. Now, I just join him.” She gave her glass a little shake to emphasize her point.

I took the glass from Brittany’s hand and breathed the drink in—a light, slightly sweet, fruity bouquet filled my nose. The first swallow puckered my tongue and warmed my belly. Every cell in my body seemed to exhale.

“Well, if everyone else is having one,” Susanne said with a smile. Brittany poured her a glass, too.

“Thank you so much for the food you brought, Cadence,” Hannah said. “I can’t believe you made all of that for us. My husband will be thrilled.”

I smiled at her over my wineglass as I took another sip. “It was my pleasure.” While I wasn’t into scrapbooking or knitting, I did love to cook, so every new mother in the group—whether it was their first child or their fourth—received a few days’ worth of my freezer-friendly lasagnas or vats of hearty beef stew. Hannah was no exception.

“Wow,” Renee had said when I showed up unexpectedly at her house with an ice chest full of foil-wrapped meals. Her body was ripe, about to give birth to her second baby any day. “What made you decide to do this?”

“Empathy, I guess,” I said, smiling shyly as I stood on her front porch. “There were so many times during Charlie’s first month that the idea of needing to get dinner on the table nearly brought me to tears. I was sleeping maybe three hours total a night. I could barely find time to shower, let alone defrost a roast.” I shrugged. “I figured a few ready-made meals might help alleviate that for you a bit.”

She laughed. “Let’s hope so. Thank you so much. It means a lot.”

The other women were appreciative of the gesture, as well. After a couple of months of doing it on my own, another member suggested that the idea become a regular practice. From then on, when one of the group’s members became pregnant or adopted, it wasn’t uncommon for her to have at least a month’s worth of meals in her freezer before the baby was due.

“Cadence’s food is amazing,” Brittany said. “She always brought the best appetizers to my parties. When I could get her to show up.”

I took another swallow of wine, almost emptying the glass, choosing to ignore her cloaked jab. “Oh, I see,” I said, feeling pleasantly engaged. “You just want me for my hot artichoke dip.”

“Well, yes,” Brittany said as she lifted the bottle and tilted it to top off my drink. “And for the money you’ll spend to up my commission.”

All the women laughed then, including me.

“Where is Leah going to preschool?” Susanne asked Hannah.

Hannah looked surprised. “She’s only two. Doesn’t preschool start when she’s three?”

“Oh, no,” Brittany said. “You need to get her registered now. Isn’t that right, Cadence?”

I nodded. “The waiting list at the Sunshine House is at least six months long. If you want her to get in, you should get her name on it.” I recognized the look of panic on Hannah’s face, remembering how intimidated I was when I first joined the group. The other women appeared so confident in their mothering skills; I felt like a freshman in a room full of MBAs. It had taken me almost two months just to decipher which of Charlie’s cries meant he was hungry and which meant he needed to sleep. Suddenly, the stakes around my choices took on a whole new weight. Breast milk or formula? Organic or processed? Cloth or disposable diapers? Home school or public? The list of potential mistakes seemed endless. It overwhelmed me.

“Don’t worry,” I said to Hannah now. “You’ll figure it all out.” I wasn’t sure if I was reassuring her or myself.

A sudden cry erupted from the other room—I knew immediately from the pitch it was my son. I set my glass on the counter with a light clatter and rushed to his side. He was standing with his arms straight at his sides, his fingers balled into fists. “She took my block!” he hollered.

Leah stood only a few steps away, a yellow block clasped to her chest. She whipped around to hide it from view. I crouched down to Charlie’s level. “Charlie, you were playing with Leah just fine a minute ago. And there are plenty of blocks for everyone to share. Why don’t you ask her to build something else with you?”

“No.” Charlie pouted.

Hannah stepped next to her daughter. “Leah, you need to give the block back to Charlie. He’s your guest.”

“No, no,” I said. “Charlie can share.” I rubbed my son’s arm. “Can’t you, Charlie?”

Charlie dropped his chin to his chest and shook his head.

I sighed. “Okay, then, I guess it’s time we go home.” I stood up and took his hand to lead him. He pulled, trying to fight me. I don’t know what the experts were thinking when they classified two-year-olds as “terrible.” It wasn’t until his third birthday that Charlie had occasionally seemed in need of an exorcism.

“Sorry,” I apologized to the group. “He needs a nap.”

“I do not!” Charlie protested. “You need a nap!”

“He’s right about that,” I said with a deep breath and a forced smile. What I really needed was to get him home. He could go from pouting and cutely sassy to a full-blown tantrum in ten seconds flat, something I didn’t feel comfortable having the other women witness. I couldn’t help but feel like his behavior reflected how good a job I was doing as his mother. If he lost it, it was like having to wear a dunce cap in front of the entire class.

“Thanks for having us, Hannah,” I said. “It was good to meet both of you. Leah’s wonderful.”

“Good to meet you, too,” Hannah said, hiking Leah up onto her hip.

“Here,” Susanne said, handing me my glass. “Looks like you might need it.”

I regarded the half-full glass, everything in me screaming to grab it and drink it down, knowing how quickly it would dissolve my growing tension. “I really shouldn’t,” I said.

“All right, then.” Susanne laughed and poured the rest into her own glass. “I’ll call you soon.”

“Mama, let’s go!” Charlie said, pulling me toward the front door.

“Okay, okay,” I said. I grabbed my purse and waved to the other women. “ ’Bye, everyone.”

With Charlie strapped into his car seat, I set my hands deliberately at ten and two on the steering wheel and slowly pulled out from the curb. I drove along, quietly humming “Fruit Salad” by the Wiggles. Charlie would listen to their CDs constantly if I’d let him, and as a result, I knew all the songs by heart.

As I turned the corner to my street singing “Dorothy the Dinosaur” under my breath, a car blared its horn long and loud, forcing me to slam on my brakes and bumping my chest against the steering wheel. I’d forgotten to put on my seat belt.

“Shit!” I exclaimed. I wasn’t going very fast, but still, my heart leapt into my throat and my eyes went straight to the rearview mirror. Charlie had zonked out within minutes of leaving Hannah’s house and miraculously didn’t seem disturbed by the jarring stop. His pink, bow-shaped lips smacked open and shut, but his eyes remained closed.

“There’s a stop sign there for a reason, lady!” the man yelled as he drove past, angrily flipping me off.

With my chest aching and adrenaline pulsing through my veins, I fastened my seat belt and took a couple of deep breaths before pushing on the gas. I’ve turned this corner a thousand times—how the hell could I have missed that sign?

Of course, I knew why I’d missed it. I knew it from the wine-tinged, fuzzy feeling around my edges, the slightly loose, unhinged feeling in my joints. I drove down the block to my house, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles were white, keeping the speedometer below ten miles per hour. I wondered how I could have been so stupid, putting Charlie’s life in danger like that. A moment later, as I pulled into the safety of my driveway, I counted my blessings, thankful that at least I had learned this lesson without anyone getting hurt.

As the economy declined, my freelance work became so sparse I started toying with the idea of going back to Peter Baskin, my editor at the Herald, and begging for my old job back. But the last thing I wanted to do was go back to a standard full-time job and put my son in day care twelve hours a day. In fact, the idea made my stomach turn. I didn’t want to be my mother, but I also couldn’t get away from the sinking sensation that I didn’t want to be who I was.

Charlie turned four in August, and that November, I managed to swing a contract with Woman’s Day for an article about why women take back a husband after he cheats. The managing editor initially asked me to write the article on spec, which meant I would have written it in full and then they would have decided whether or not they wanted to buy it, but I managed to negotiate my way into a contract instead, including a ten percent kill fee if they decided not to publish.

On the Friday before Thanksgiving, my plan was to hunker down while Charlie was at Martin’s for the weekend and get the Woman’s Day assignment done. I’d finished my research and interviewed a psychology professor at the University of Washington to cite as my relationship expert, but I was still having a hard time getting the actual writing started.

I sipped at a glass of wine while Charlie ate dinner—he was leaving soon, so I figured it would be okay to indulge in front of him. For almost six months, since the day of the stop sign incident, I’d waited until after he was in bed for the night to pour my first glass.

Martin showed up around six o’clock, a full hour after the time he told me he’d pick Charlie up.

“Daddy!” my son said when I opened the front door. He ran and jumped up, throwing his bony arms around his father’s neck and squeezing hard. Martin squeezed back, lifting his child into the air, letting Charlie’s body hang straight down—a human necktie. His skinny legs floated free as Martin rotated, swinging his son back and forth. Charlie laughed.

“Sorry I’m late,” Martin said, looking just over my shoulder instead of making direct eye contact.

“Uh-huh,” I said. He knew I’d heard that phrase fall out of his mouth enough times for it to lose all meaning; I don’t know why he bothered to speak it. I took in his casual work attire, blue jeans and a black V-neck T-shirt with a Windows icon over his heart. A bitter thought floated through my mind: I pledge allegiance to Bill Gates . . . and to all the money that he pays me. . . . And then I remembered that for the time being, between the proceeds of the divorce settlement and child support, Bill Gates’s money was keeping me afloat, too.

“So,” Martin said, lifting Charlie up to hug him. “Do you have his stuff?”

“It’s right there,” I said, pointing to the Spider-Man-embossed backpack by the door. I’d packed four changes of clothes and an additional five pairs of underwear for the two-day stay at his dad’s. Charlie was successfully potty trained; however, his attempts to clean himself up afterward occasionally went very, very wrong.

“Great, thanks.” He stared at the glass of wine I still held in my hand and I quickly set it on the entryway table.

“He hasn’t been eating much other than chicken nuggets and mandarin oranges,” I said. “So you might want to stop at the store and pick some up.”

“We’ll manage. We’re going over to my mom’s tomorrow.”

“Ah. How is Alice?” Our conversation was tense—I suddenly flashed on how my husband’s naked body used to feel pressed against mine in the middle of the night, how he’d set his wide palm across the flesh of my belly. I gave my head a tiny shake, trying to erase the image.

“She’s good.” He pulled back his head, craning to look at Charlie. “You ready, buddy?”

“Yep!” Charlie said, kicking his spindly legs in emphasis.

I leaned over and kissed my son’s cheek, rubbing his back as I did. “ ’Bye, Mr. Man. Mommy loves you.”

“Love you, too,” Charlie said.

After I closed the door behind them, I went straight to my laptop, but the words wouldn’t come. I was a fake, a fraud. I don’t know why I ever thought I could be a writer. I’d sent ten query letters out in that last two months and only picked up one assignment. Every “thanks, but no thanks” response that came in the mail felt like a nail in my professional coffin.

I sighed, leaned back in my chair, and eyed the liter of unopened merlot on the counter. It’s cheaper in the larger bottles, I told myself when I stood in the wine aisle at the store, debating which size I should purchase. I’m buying them to save money. Maybe I could have just a little more. Once I really wind down, I’ll be able to work.

I got up, walked over to the counter, and grabbed the corkscrew that lay next to the sink. I’d stopped bothering to put it away. Digging the sharp point into the cork, I twisted until the metal spiral was deep enough to anchor the lever against the lip of the bottle. The scarlet liquid flowed into the glass, and a moment later, the first swallow rolled over my tongue and around my teeth like silk; its rich, heady scent rose up into my senses and made me weak. Within minutes, I finally relaxed enough to feel like I fit inside my own skin. I set up camp with my bottle and a goblet the size of a small grapefruit, marveling at how half a bottle could fit inside a single glass.

Five rapidly typed pages later, my cell phone rang. Glancing at the caller ID, I saw Susanne’s name pop up.

“I’m just leaving the office,” she said, “and Brad took Anya to his mom’s. Can I stop by for a drink?”

I looked at the document open on my laptop, the blinking cursor seeming to mock me. My social life was practically nonexistent—a couple hours spent talking about something other than Elmo and Spider-Man was incredibly appealing. “Sure,” I said. “Martin just took Charlie to his house for the weekend.”

She blew in through the front door thirty minutes later, a bottle of Chilean merlot in hand. Her black hair was pulled back from her face with a red velvet headband. I gave her a quick hug and we settled on the couch, both with a goblet of wine.

We chatted about work and the kids, but halfway through our second glass, Susanne paused and looked down into her drink. She bit her bottom lip before speaking, managing to smear lipstick on her front tooth. “Was divorcing Martin the worst thing you’ve ever done?” she asked. “Did it just devastate you?” The words tumbled from her mouth, falling into each other like a line of dominoes.

I swallowed and looked down, too, running the tip of my index finger over the edge of my glass. “Divorce is hard,” I began. “But—”

“There’s always a ‘but.’ ”

“It’s hard,” I continued with a small smile, “but staying with Martin probably would’ve been a hell of a lot harder.”

She blew out a long breath. “Okay, so it’s a matter of degree, then? How hard would staying be in comparison to getting a divorce?”

“Pretty much.”

“But is the thing that might be easier—”

“I didn’t say divorce is easy,” I said, cutting her off. “I said it seems to be less difficult than staying would have been.” A minute distinction, but one I felt compelled to make.

She took a sip of her drink, looking up at me over the rim. “Okay, then,” she said, after she swallowed. “Do you think choosing the less difficult thing is necessarily the right thing? If your marriage is hard, then isn’t it your duty to stay and work things out, maybe even come out stronger for it in the long run? Isn’t that the whole idea behind taking vows?”

I was silent, grappling with this idea, not sure if I was dizzy from the thought or the wine. “I’m not sure,” I finally said. “I suppose challenges do tend to teach us more, but being alone again is another form of that, right? It’s challenging.” I tried not to sound defensive, but failed.

Susanne set her glass on the coffee table, then adjusted her headband. “I wasn’t asking you to justify anything. Really. I’m sorry if it came across that way. I was more just wondering out loud, you know? Philosophizing.”

I took a deep breath, then released it, trying to erase the tension that had invaded each cell of my skin, pulling it tight across my flesh. “Why, exactly?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you philosophizing?”

“I’m thinking about leaving Brad,” she said.

“Oh.” I finished the last swallow in my glass, then set it next to Susanne’s on the table. “I thought I picked up on some tension the last time you talked about him.” I chose my words carefully here, knowing full well how dangerous the territory can become around saying anything negative about a friend’s spouse. They end up staying together, and you’re suddenly the bitch who talked shit about her husband.

Susanne laughed, a harsh, dry sound. “ ‘Some tension’? We’re strung tighter than a goddamn violin.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “How’s Anya doing?”

“She’s lovely. Daddy’s little girl. I think she loves him more than she loves me.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” I said. “I don’t think kids make those kinds of distinctions. He just spends more time with her. That’s all.”

“Ever since I went back to work, she doesn’t want me to help give her a bath. She doesn’t want me to read with her or cook her breakfast, or any of it. She doesn’t want me.” Her eyes welled with tears, but she tried to hide it by looking away and reaching for her empty glass.

“I’m sure it’s just a phase,” I reassured her.

“Yeah,” she said. “I hope so.” She sighed. “Can I have another drink?”

“Of course,” I said. I stood up, but felt woozy and ended up falling backward onto the couch.

“Uh-oh,” Susanne said, laughing. “Time for rehab, Lindsay Lohan.”

I laughed, too, a short, staccato sound. “Yeah, I could use the vacation,” I said, then stumbled to the kitchen and grabbed us another bottle of wine.